Macklemore getting used to life without Ryan Lewis

Macklemore performs during the NRL grand final between the Melbourne Storm and the North Queensland Cowboys at ANZ Stadium in Sydney, Australia, Oct. 1, 2017

Macklemore performs during the NRL grand final between the Melbourne Storm and the North Queensland Cowboys at ANZ Stadium in Sydney, Australia, Oct. 1, 2017 (Dan Himbrechts/EPA)

Steve KnopperChicago Tribune

For the first time since 2010, Ben Haggerty walked into a recording studio to make an album without DJ, producer and sidekick Ryan Lewis. Surprisingly, this did not freak him out.

“When we decided we were going to take a break, that's when I experienced these ‘Oh no, what's this going to be like?’ feelings," says Haggerty, also known as Macklemore, the rapper behind 2012 megahits "Thrift Shop" and "Same Love." “In the studio, things kind of fall back into place, but there were definitely songs (where I said”: ‘I wonder what Ryan would do here. I bet he could figure out this puzzle.’

“Ryan is a great puzzle-connector, and there are definitely moments where I've missed him,” Haggerty, 34, adds by phone from his hometown, Seattle, where he’s driving with his wife and two young children to a pumpkin patch. “Even now, being on the road, the first couple shows: ‘This is really strange, performing without Ryan.’”

Macklemore and Lewis remain close — in a recent interview, Haggerty called Lewis “my brother,” “one of my best friends in this world” and “a creative genius” — but they needed to split, at least for now, so Haggerty could make music in a new, fresh way. Macklemore’s recent solo album, “Gemini,” is more spontaneous and freewheeling than the duo's 2016 album “This Unholy Mess I've Made” or its 2012 breakthrough, “The Heist.” The mission statement for “Gemini,” Haggerty says, was “think less, feel more.”

The album is filled with guest stars, from pop singer Kesha to superstar rappers Lil Yachty and Migos’ Offset, and Haggerty closely monitored their comparatively loose approaches to the recording studio. “With Offset and Lil Yachty, they literally go into the (sound) booth with nothing written down and piece together a verse, going line by line. It’s how people have done it for a long time — Lil Wayne, Jay-Z. Just watching the freedom in that was inspiring,” he says. “Channel the spirit. If you need to go back and redo it, great, but don't overthink it. Don't overcalculate it. Be in the moment with it.”

Haggerty began making music as Professor Macklemore in 2000, recording albums, as he told a reporter, with “a (bad) microphone from Radio Shack and a popper-stopper (microphone filter) made from his mom's nylons.” (“You know, they're probably in a box somewhere. I don't know if the nylons made the cut,” he says in the 20-minute phone interview, “but it’s definitely some (bad) microphones in some garage somewhere in Seattle.”) He put out EPs and albums, with regional success, then began collaborating with Lewis, who had a way of stirring up soul music samples with bits of piano and march-time beats and making all of it snugly fit Macklemore's rhymes.

The duo remained independent, signing with the big distribution company ADA but refusing to make a deal with a major record label, keeping creative control of its music.

By 2012, Macklemore’s song “Thrift Shop” started to go viral, notching millions of daily YouTube views, and Haggerty made a key business decision. ADA’s parent company, Warner, a major label, offered to promote “Thrift Shop” to top radio stations for a percentage of the sales. Haggerty’s manager called him and said: “This is on the table. If we pick this, and it works, your life will be completely different than what we ever expected. Or, you can be an underground artist and tour and be successful, but you'd stay underground.”

Macklemore chose option A, and “Thrift Shop” hit N. 1 and went platinum. This was an extraordinary development, but it masked the fact that Haggerty was descending into drug addiction — marijuana, pills and prescription cough syrup — to the point that he was having trouble focusing on his music in the studio. Inspired by his new family, including his wife, Tricia Davis, and their two small children, he cleaned up, delving into a 12-step program and concentrating on improving his health via meditation and yoga.

During that time, Haggerty's discomfort with what he has called “appropriating” black culture as a white rapper began to grow. He and Lewis contacted Lewis’ former University of Washington thesis adviser, Georgia Roberts, and took a crash six-month seminar on race. Haggerty attended Black Lives Matter protests, spoke out against President Donald Trump’s racial divisiveness and took the unusual (some said patronizing) step of apologizing to runner-up Kendrick Lamar when he won a 2014 Grammy Award. Plus, last year, he and Lewis put out “White Privilege II,” a nine-minute collaborative suite with African-American rapper and poet Jamila Woods, which muses on all these topics.

“It’s far too easy to not think about race issues,” Haggerty says. “It’s far too easy to not have to scrutinize yourself in how you might be appropriating culture, how you might be using a black art form for monetary gain, and the brighter you shine, that potentially diminishes others’ lives. The more I’m tapped into doing anti-racist work, the more I’m tapped into community and having conversations about white supremacy and privilege, that’s when I feel I’m on point and I’m aware. It’s not a burden for me to think about it.”